Remember how, when you buy something on Amazon they are always quick to tell you that people that bought that particular gadget, book, DVD or special gift, also bought these other vaguely (sometimes curiously remotely) similar items?

It's called the upsell. Whilst I've got you buying one thing, I'll sell you another.

I was reminded of this when looking at Custom Affinity Audiences which we are actively encouraging our clients to consider in their accounts. We're seeing some strong results, and the reason seems to be quite simple.

With Custom Affinity Audiences you are creating a list that can be used just like a remarketing list, but without the need for people to visit your site first. So how does it work?

The one line answer is: you give Google a list of web addresses, interests and/or keywords and they will build a target list of people that match those criteria.

So you need to think about where your customers are likely to be going in addition to your website. Let's think about a more specific case. Let's say you sell garden sun loungers. Clearly, in terms of keywords, it's fairly safe to say that "garden furniture" and "sun loungers" would be obvious choices. But then so might "sun bathing" "how to get a great tan" - we can happily add those. Then, what about websites.... we can start with all our competitors - where else might people go to buy sun loungers? And where might they go to find out which are the best? And how about the whole home and garden sector - which are the ones most likely to be visited by your target customer.

Once we have added 10-15 websites/interests/keywords we can ask Google to build the list. We don't actually get the list itself, but we do get demographic data and an idea of the size. We can further adjust if we don't feel it works for our specific case, but once we're happy we can run our campaigns to target this group.

Our clients are seeing results that at least match, if not surpass the results we are seeing from our own remarketing lists. It's like being able to develop a remarketing list from a strong competitors site, or a thought leader in your sector's site.

As the title of this post suggests - people who like remarketing are also liking custom affinity audiences, perhaps you should take a look.

Are you using custom affinity audiences? If so, how are they working for you? Please let us know in the comments.